


you keep samin' when you oughta be a'changin'

by ratherembarrassing



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:09:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8951593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherembarrassing/pseuds/ratherembarrassing
Summary: She cries. Cat refuses to talk to her, and Kara cries, and then security appears out of nowhere and escorts her out of the building.And just like that, she's no longer Cat Grant's assistant.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wistfulwatcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wistfulwatcher/gifts).



> happy secret santa!
> 
> so my prompt involves a time loop. i just wanted to stick up the front that it's pretty stock standard for this trope to get dark at some point and the protagonist always ends up trying to end their life. not in this fic! it's christmas, there's none of that in here.

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do..._

"Alex, I swear to Rao," Kara groans, mashing her phone against the side of her face not currently pressed into her pillow, "I know I'm an alien but I do actually need sleep. I like sleep. I really, really like sleep, and did I mention? I _need_ sleep."

"Sorry, Supergirl, but we've got a situation."

 _Ugh_. There was always a situation. And yes, sometimes that situation is some Fort Rozz escapee, or evil anti-alien scientists, but sometimes it's just kids messing around on the bluffs at Point Loma who really didn't need Supergirl playing mother hen at 3am. She could have been curled up under her nice warm quilt with her fuzzy socks and puppy jammies, instead of out in the unexpected cold snap that California is putting on in an attempt to get into the Christmas spirit.

She really hates the cold, and the three hours of sleep and fuzzy socks and puppy jammies aren't going to cut it.

"Where am I going?" she asks, struggling to untangle her legs from her bedding. "Please let this be quick, Cat's got a meeting this morning and she's definitely going to need coffee before she goes in. I've been late every day this week, Alex."

"If you've been late every day this week, will Cat even notice if you're late again?"

" _Yes_ , she will notice." Maybe. It's hard to tell these days. "But also, _not the point_." Kara finally frees her feet, swinging them to the floor with a triumphant thud. "I love my job."

"I know you do—"

"No, Alex, I don't think you do. I— I know you all think it's just this thing I _do_ , like I can't be Supergirl all the time so I have to do _something_ , but it… It isn't just any job to me. _This_ job is important to me. _Cat_ is important—"

"Okay, Kara," Alex interrupts, the sound of alarms suddenly very loud in the background, "I know you love Cat but I need you to—"

"I— I don't _love_ Cat, Alex."

"Joke, Kara. Just a joke— _you really need to go now_."

Kara's in her suit in seconds, Alex feeding her details of the robbery taking place in West National City as she searches for her boots, fishing them out from beneath the couch where she had kicked them last night.

"Oh," Alex's voice sounds in her earpiece. "Um. Kara, you got an umbrella by any chance?"

As she steps up into her apartment window there's a flash of lightning, the crack of thunder almost immediately after, and as she leaps into the sky Kara sighs loud enough for Alex to hear over the rush of wind.

…

  


"Hey, Kara— whoa, don't you own an umbrella?"

She does, but not one that was going to keep her dry as she flew across town to get back to Catco before 9am. Technically she'd still be late, but at least it wasn't too late to get Cat her morning coffee. Her clothes are fine, but her hair is a mess and with every step her shoes gave a soggy squelch.

"I guess not."

"Oh— okay. Um," Julie pauses, blinking with a deliberateness that grates even further on Kara's damp nerves before forcing a painfully fake smile onto her face. "Here's your latte for Ms Grant!"

Kara takes the coffee, deflating further at the temperature of the cup.

"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," Kara repeats to herself, "it doesn't matter…"

But the elevator is crammed full with people, none of whom are headed to the same floor, and after they stop on level 39 she is still sharing the car with Randal from marketing who had once hit on her at a Christmas party and _when_ _was she going to get a chance to heat Cat's coffee up before_ —

The little television above the door that shows the weather— unexpected rain, yeah, no kidding—, ads for expensive gadgets and the hourly Catco News bulletin switches from an ad for the new iPhone to the headlines. The hourly headlines.

The 9.00am headlines.

The elevator doors slide open and across the bullpen she watches in horror as Cat, dressed in a beautiful green dress and holding the boardroom door as a stream of men in suits file inside, spots Kara immediately. And then, with a look of supreme disappointment, Cat lets the door swing closed.

Oh, !

The elevator starts to close again, and Kara flaps her arm between it, squeezing through before it decides if it's going to open or not. She listens to it rumbling back down, undecided herself if she wishes she was still inside, travelling away from here.

It's going to be a day, and it's already _been_ a day.

With a loud squelch of every step, Kara trudges across the bullpen, averting her eyes from where Carol is browsing a dating website—she's _married_ —and ignoring the disgusting sandwich Winn is stuffing into his face at his desk.

"Hmff—"

 _"Don't_ ," Kara snaps, trying with all her might to ignore the food spraying from Winn's mouth as she drops into her chair. She can hear every crumb landing on Winn's desk, and with a groan she lets her head thud against her desk.

It will be fine. It will be— Kara sucks in a breath and straightens her spine, logs into her tablet and begins the morning routine she's worked into a science. Confirm Cat's internal meetings, sort layout comments for their relevant departments, order lunch.

Maryann from the magazine is out sick; Karen, Joe's assistant, wants to talk about the Christmas party; Stacey isn't ready but she'll be there.

The Trib's editorial is missing, and she digs it out from under a cushion on Cat's couch. Things only go missing like that when Cat has stayed particularly late, and Kara deflates at the thought of Cat here the night before, working away on her own.

The boardroom doors eventually open just as Kara's phoned in Cat's cheeseburger salad, and people start streaming out. As subtly as she can manage, Kara zaps the coffee cup still sitting on her desk; there's no way it's going to taste any good, but Cat is probably just going to drop it in the trash anyway, so she might as well try.

She hovers outside, listens to Cat shmooze with the executives she's been trying to wrangle into a partnership for months, and there isn't a hint at her mood being anything other than perfectly pleasant. They talk for ages, to the point where Kara starts to wonder if Cat's deliberately keeping her waiting, and she's about to give up and go back to her desk when Cat ushers the last person out, following after him with a cheery reminder that they really have to try the new sake bar in town.

Cat would never joke about sake, so the meeting must have gone well.

"Your latte, Ms Grant."

" _Keira_ ." Oh no, that's not a good tone. Cat has a lot of different tones, a variety of not good tones, but this one is really, really not good. "Nice of you to join us today." Oh. No. "And _thank you,"_ Cat says, heading back across the bullpen towards her office at a leisurely pace, "for taking time out of your busy schedule."

Cat spins around then, Kara rearing back to avoid running right into her, and take the coffee Kara's still holding, fingertips grasping the cup as if it might somehow transfer a communicable disease onto her hand.

"Oh," she adds. It wasn't a good _oh_ . It wasn't the kind of _oh_ that suggested Cat had just remembered something important. It was the kind of _oh_ that meant whatever Cat was about to say she had been sitting on, waiting patiently— did Cat even know how to wait patiently?— to release the thought onto the world.

" _Oh_ ," she says. "And you're fired."

…

She cries.

Cat refuses to talk to her, and Kara cries, and then security appears out of nowhere and escorts her out of the building.

And just like that, she's no longer Cat Grant's assistant.

…

She doesn't know how she ends up in a secret alien bar in a back alley of National City's less respectable part of town.

One minute she was flying home, flying away from Cat and the place she'd spent the last two years of her life trying to help make a difference in the world in a way that being Supergirl could never manage to do. She's not always fully in control of her powers when she's upset, and her hearing was jumping all over the place, but Kara would recognize someone speaking Almarecian anywhere, and she'd followed the voice to—

A secret alien bar that serves the meanest flaming alien martini Kara's ever had in her life. In fact, it's the only flaming alien martini she's ever had, but she's beginning to think it's a good one.

And _something_ has to be good, right? Because Cat _fired her_ , and now she's unemployed. Well, less employed; the DEO does pay her, which is nice of them because she would totally be Supergirl even if they didn't, but then she probably wouldn't get to work with Alex, which would make her sad. Just like she's not going to get to work with Cat anymore.

"I can't believe she _fired_ me! For real this time!"

It's been months since Cat last threatened to fire her, and Kara had thought a part of that was because of how, well, close? She thinks that the right word, but then again _Cat fired her_ so what does Kara know?

(Close isn't the right word. Cat is _confusing._  One day she seems to be offering Kara the moon, the next she's freezing Kara out like she has her own super freezy breath, and Kara's _confused_ on a daily basis because Cat? Is _confusing_.)

The bartender down the other end of the bar doesn't look impressed with Cat firing her, which isn't fair, because— because Cat was just having a bad day. Probably. Cat has a lot of bad days, though, and she's never fired Kara for real before.

"Hey, you shut up!" she shouts at the bartender, standing up from her stool. "You don't—"

"Oh boy," Alex says beside her, taking hold of Kara by the arm, and where did Alex even come from? "Okay, my lightweight baby sister, tomorrow we'll talk about irresponsible consumption of alcohol, but right now we're going to get you home."

"I don't wanna go home," Kara sighs, Alex tugging her in the direction of the door. "I wanna go to work."

Outside, night is encroaching and the air is post-rain crisp and it makes the world sharper, sends the haze of alien alcohol into retreat, and, "Alex," she says, gasping a little, "she— she _fired me._ "

"I know." Alex pulls her into a sideways hug, guiding her out of the alleyway and onto the main street. "And it's okay. Before I worked at the DEO I got fired from all kinds of jobs."

"That's because," and oh, her words are all slurry, "you drank too much and were ruining your life." Alex's arm around her turns rigid, and maybe the alien alcohol hasn't quite left her brain yet. "I mean…"

"Because this is the first time in your 25 years on this or any other planet that you've ever been drunk, I'm gonna give you a free pass on that one."

Kara ducks her head, and winds her arm around Alex's waist to return the hug Alex hasn't released her from. "Thanks."

"But seriously," Alex continues, steering them into the flow of people crossing the street. "I know you love that job—" And Kara can't help but remember what Alex had said instead just that morning "—but maybe it's—"

The car comes around the corner faster than even Kara can track with her fuzzy mind, but her body reacts without any input from her brain, drags Alex forward and into the people ahead of them, sending them all stumbling forward and out of the path of the obnoxiously tricked out Nissan careening through a red light.

"Hey!" the woman she's just rescued from certain death shouts, getting to her feet. "Watch where you're going!"

"How about _you_ watch where _you're_ going," Kara says. She just saved this woman and _this_ is the thanks she gets? "You should be—"

"Okay, _sorry!_ " Alex interjects. "We're sorry. Just an accident." She nudges Kara in the side, her elbow sharp against Kara's ribs. "Right? Just an accident. Not at all the result of alien superspeed dragging three people halfway across a four lane intersection in seconds," she adds quietly.

Halfway across what now? The woman glares at her again, but her friend starts to lead her away, and Kara blinks back at the intersection and the car that's quickly disappearing down the street.

"I don't understand."

"Come on," Alex says gently, steering her in the opposite direction, "time to teach you how to survive a hangover."

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do..._

"Ugh, Alex, what is it?"

"Sorry, Supergirl," Alex chirps, clearly prepared to make Kara suffer for her misadventures the night before, "but we've got a situation."

"You said that yesterday, and look how _that_ turned out." Kara rolls over, pulling her pillow over her head and wrapping her blanket more tightly around her.

"I'm sorry about that, but Kara, you need to get down to the West National City, ASAP."

"Okay, okay." Kara struggles out of the blankets and sheets, digs out her boots from beneath the couch, and attempts to shake the sleep from her head. "What's with that place this week?"

She's barrelling towards the clump of larger buildings when the rain starts to fall, but it's waking her up by the second and otherwise she seems to have escaped any kind of hangover.

"Where am I headed?" she asks as she hits the main street.

"West National Bank," Alex responds in her ear. "It's next door to the giant donut."

"Wait, again?"

"What do you mean?"

"What's going…" She's landed in front of the donut place that sells her third favorite donuts in National City, the ones with the tiny pink sprinkles that glitter, and there in the window of the bank is the guy she stopped _yesterday_ from robbing this very bank.

The guy she tossed into the back of an NCPD van. _Yesterday._

That can't be right. The rain is starting to fall harder now, and she pushes her hair out of her eyes. Something feels very wrong.

"Alex," she asks slowly, "what date is it?"

"Uh… the 17th."

"Wait, that doesn't help, I didn't know what the date was yesterday."

"Kara, what are you talking about?"

Inside the bank she sees the guy pull out a second gun, just like he did yesterday, and grab the teller from behind the counter, just like yesterday, and the police officer start to rush headlong inside, just like yesterday.

"Oh, this is not good."

…

Not knowing what else to do, she stops the robber and then goes back to Catco.

If yesterday didn't happen, then she isn't fired, and if she isn't fired she still has a job, which means she's late and wet and _late_ all over again.

The little television switches to the 9.00am news, and she sinks back against the wall of the elevator with a groan, watches the doors open with dread, and there's Cat again, holding the boardroom door open and giving her that look and oh, she is so fired again.

Kara sits at her desk as Winn spits food all over the desk, and ignores Carol on her computer with the dating websites, and doesn't dig out the editorial layout from the couch, and doesn't confirm Cat's lunch.

Eventually people start to leave, and she can hear Cat doing her thing again, and every second that ticks by brings Kara closer to being fired again, and she can't wait any longer, she stands from her desk, grabs the coffee out of habit, and waits at the door for Cat to come out.

"Your latte, Ms Grant."

"Is this for me?" Cat asks, snagging the cup for Kara's hands as she hurries by. "The me from an hour ago could have used this, Keira."

And then Cat disappears into her office without another word.

"What?"

…

Kara spends the rest of the day swinging back and forth between absolute certainty that what happened yesterday was real, and the deep suspicion that she's developed a new superpower that lets her see into the future.

But she's not fired, and Cat doesn't comment on the way her shoes are still squelching, and Kara will take it.

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

"Dammit." She snags her phone from the nightstand, unsurprised to see Alex's face on the screen. "Hi Alex."

"Sorry, Supergirl, but we've got a situation."

"Yeah, about that."

…

"Okay, what happens next?"

Alex is surprisingly easy to convince.

"Next," Kara says, sending Paul, the thrice caught bank robber, into the back of the police van. "I go to Catco, and see if Cat fires me again."

" _What?_ "

"I don't know." She takes off into the sky and back towards downtown National City. "It didn't happen the second time."

…

"We'll try that new sake bar," Cat says. Kara wonders how Cat even came to like sake, or sushi for that matter, given her fish issues.

Kara loiters, glaring at Carol who is _still_ clicking through profiles on the dating website, and then Cat steps out of the boardroom.

"Your latte, Ms Grant."

"Keira," Cat says, and it's not the same tone as the first time but it sends a chill through Kara nonetheless. She takes the coffee from Kara, cringes through a glare before she even takes a sip. "If you can't even manage to do that little _trick_ you do, then what even is the point of keeping you as my assistant?"

"Wh— what?!"

Cat can't— _can't_ mean what Kara thinks she means. She can't.

"You're fired."

Through the panic running through her, hearing the words still manages to hurt just as much the second time, and she watches Cat level one last piercing glare at her before strutting away with a dismissive flutter of her hand.

…

She sits outside Catco and watches people coming and going.

There's Arthur from Catco's accounting department arriving late, and an old lady with a small bunch of flowers meeting a friend. She counts seventeen red cars and two yellow, and wonders why she even went into work when it doesn't even matter.

She wonders what it would be like to stop going into Catco, to never see Cat again, and the thought fills her with so much dread her eyes begin to sting.

But she'll see Cat again tomorrow, apparently. Or _today_ , again. Her head throbs at the thought, and she wipes her eyes, wonders what she should do with the rest of her day, since she doesn't have a job for the next fourteen hours.

A young girl, maybe in college, sits down on the wall Kara's perched on, and Kara watches her fiddle with her phone for a while, until the girl realizes Kara's watching her and Kara realizes she's being weird.

And that it totally doesn't matter.

"Can I tell you something?" she blurts out, and the girl stops side eyeing Kara and outright looks back at her. "My name's Kara Zor-El. I'm Supergirl."

"Yeah, right." The girl goes back to looking at her phone.

"No, really. Look." Kara slips her glasses off, shakes her hair loose, and when she looks up the girl is doing a good impression of a Looney Toon. "Told ya."

"Ohmygod!"

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

"You're fired."

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

"You're fired."

…

"Hi, sorry, can I just—" She takes the microphone from the Catco News reporter covering the bank robbery. "Hi. I'm Kara Danvers. I was an assistant at Catco Worldwide Media. I'm also Supergirl."

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

"We need to get you a banker's box."

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

"Whatever you ordered me for lunch, cancel it unless it involves a cheeseburger."

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

"You're fired."

Since it doesn't matter what happens, she follows Cat into her office.

"Can I ask you something?"

"I don't know, Keira." Cat retreats behind her desk, ripping her shoes from her feet as she drops into her chair. " _Can_ you?"

" _May I?_ May I please ask you why this? Why this morning? Why, when I've been late every single day this week, was today the day you couldn't take it anymore?"

"Because I'm tired, Keira." And Cat's words sound just that, and Kara can't quite remember what she looked like yesterday, because it was so long ago now, but she's not sure Cat looked this exhausted the last time they did _this_ day, either.

Cat turns her chair away from her then, and Kara accepts her dismissal, leaving Cat to live out her day again.

…

"So…" Alex begins, returning to the lab where she'd left Kara an hour ago. "We've got nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Not a thing. Every single test we ran came back as boringly normal as possible, you're physically fine, there's nothing showing up on the tachyon scanner. Even the deep space radar telemetry was quiet."

"Okay, so what do we do now?"

"Go home?" Alex shrugs. "Seriously, Kara, I've got _nothing_. Why don't you go home and we'll start fresh tomorrow. I've got some contacts at the NSA that might have better tropospheric data."

…

She goes home, setting a reminder in her phone like she does every today to go stop the car at the intersection at 5.24pm, and stop by the elementary school at 3.30pm, and to call Mrs Jones in half an hour.

If tomorrow ever actually comes, those three are the things she'll want to have done.

But there's one more thing now, and she opens up YouTube to see if there are any good tutorials.

  


…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

Kara hesitates. The number of times Cat has rejected her gift has left Kara doubting if she'll ever manage to achieve the impossible. But she's got it now. She can feel it.

Cat glares, and Kara holds out the coffee. "Your latte, Ms Grant."

Cat takes the cup, not taking her eyes off Kara as she brings it to her lips. She takes a long sip, and her eyes flutter as the coffee settles on her tongue, and Kara's superhearing picks up the tiny sound Cat makes.

"Keira," Cat says once she's swallowed the coffee. "Where did this coffee come from?"

She hasn't been into Catco is more days than she's kept track of. She hopes the Cat in those days managed without Kara to either do her job or to fire, but what matters is that she has spent that time perfecting her coffee-making technique.

Julie at Noonan's is confused every single day she shows up asking if she can use the machine to practice, but after today Kara thinks she's got it.

"I made it." Kara can't help the smile tugging at her face. "For you."

Cat looks stunned, like she did the day Kara had interviewed with her and the day Supergirl had saved her, and like something else that Kara has never seen in Cat before.

"Thank you, Kara."

That's… different.

And then Cat steps forward, then takes another step, close enough the Kara can feel the warmth radiating off her, and then she reaches up, wraps her hand around the back of Kara's neck, fingers threading through Kara's hair to pull her down and then Cat's mouth is pressed against hers, kissing her so softly that Kara sighs when they part.

"Oh."

Very, very different.

…

_These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do…_

It's shattering, the rush of realization that the day before is gone, that kissing Cat is gone, that Cat kissed _her_ is gone, that Cat had called her by her actual name is _gone_ and—

"Oh, thank god," Cat's voice says from beside her, "this is the world that sticks."

_...one of these days these boots are—_

"For the love of all that is good in this miserable world, get Nancy Sinatra out of my house."

**Author's Note:**

> my prompt was "cat and/or kara get stuck in a time loop." i was tickled by the possibility of that "and".


End file.
